The Perfect Air Kiss
by Nick Foulkes9 July 2010
Van Cleef & Arpels - Les Voyages Extraordinaires - Baleine Bleue clip 2
As we are soon to launch FQR Couture, our twice yearly periodical dedicated to the serious business of elegant glamour, I have been getting in training for my new role as editor in chief of a truly soignée fashion journal, and I think I have perfected the perfect air kiss. It is actually more of a jaw bump…the lips of course pucker at the empty air but there is the reassuring clink of jaw bone on jaw bone.
It takes a bit of angling of the head both in the forward and lateral planes of the neck, but I can assure the results are worth it and your participant in this ritual will thank you for not disturbing her hair, hat, earring or maquillage. I intend to patent the process and then have the directions, complete with filmed advice, placed on Her Majesty’s Internet. In order to ‘monetize’ my invention Tristram will be putting it safely behind the FQR pay wall.
I am terribly excited by FQR Couture; as we will be unashamedly elitist in our approach and have nothing to do with the sordid mimicry of the High Street…unless of course we attract copious advertising from Messrs Primark and Zara, in which case we will of course sacrifice our meagre principles in pursuit of lucre. But until such a day, which I believe is scheduled just after the first cold snap in hell, we will remain true to our ideals of glamour, glamour and …well…more glamour. You see, I do believe that men are, if anything, better qualified than women to comment on fashion. I know it sounds sexist, but I am not a man’s man. I would much rather be looking at a pretty woman in a pretty frock than I would be arguing about the torque of the new Bentley Mulsanne in my local public house – for a start, I would have trouble locating my ‘local’. Don’t get me wrong I can swap manly banter with the best of them, but it is just that I prefer beautiful women to hairy-arsed petrol heads.
Nick Foulkes at Goodwood
Anyway, back to my training; I have been busy reading Cecil Beaton’s Glass of Fashion, a volume which tells you all you need to know about feminine elegance. What Cecil did not know about fine women in fine clothes was simply not worth knowing, he chronicles the allure of such figures as the vampish Marchesa Casati and the boyish Mrs Vernon Castle, with wit style and grace…qualities which I hope will be discernable in FQR Couture.
And as well as preparing myself for the world of fashion by steeping myself in the intoxicating nectar of Sir Cecil’s prose, I also took the precaution of going to Paris during couture week, not so much to look at the frocks but to cast my eye over the latest collection of jewellery from Stan ‘the Man’ de Quercize and Nicolas ‘the Boss’ Bos, who together run Van Cleef & Arpels. Their new collection was based on four of the novels of Jules Verne and if you have a spare one or two million Euros knocking about I would give them a quick bell and transmute your rapidly devaluing Euro zone folding stuff into something of lasting value.
And then, after being dazzled by the clever use of opals and spinels – the latter so much more chic than the low quality rubies one sees too much of these days – I popped round the corner to pick out my summer ashtray from Hermes and while I was there, I bumped into my friends Simon Le Bon and Mr and Mrs Tim Jefferies. Only a few hours earlier, after being interviewed for German Vogue, albeit in a supporting role to a real world class star the elegantly suited and shod Bryan Ferry, I had been in Tim’s Mayfair gallery looking at some of Bailey’s old contact sheets from the 1960s and was particularly taken by some wonderful images of Cecil Beaton and Nureyev – funny how I keep seeing the old boy everywhere (Charlie Gladstone who was his great nephew writes about growing up with Beaton in the next issue of FQR).
Nick Foulkes at Goodwood
Now, although only Wednesday; this was the third time that I was seeing Messrs Le Bon and Jefferies inside the week. I had spent Sunday judging the Cartier Style et Luxe at Goodwood Festival of Speed with the lovely Mrs Le Bon where of course I saw the wonderful Mr and Mrs Jefferies. Then the following evening it had been the glorious celebrations of 20 years of the Riva restaurant.
Riva is quite simply the finest Italian restaurant in this or indeed any other hemisphere and although there was some sort of other gathering on the same night for Mario Testino’s snapshots of Kate Moss, or so I heard, Andrea Riva’s party was the real hot ticket – the man is, quite simply, a god. As course after course spilled out of a kitchen not much larger than a box of Cohiba Siglo VI, I marvelled at the inventiveness and staying power of the place. I thought we were doing all right to have managed to keep FQR ticking over for two years, but Andrea has managed two decades and is open twice a day every day of the week, with the exception of Saturday lunch, when I believe he has a little doze. By contrast we just about managed to bring out one newspaper every third month – but then as I said, the man is a god and alas I am but mortal.
Tags: Cartier, Cecil Beaton, Goodwood, Hermes, Nicolas Bos, Van Cleef
I don’t know much about art, but I know that the Dubai Art Fair comes with a watch exhibition attached and that was enough to have me boarding an Emirates flight to the UAE to view the watches that Van Cleef & Arpels had put on display here. With the inclusion of an enameller, complete with mini kiln to fire watch dials, and celebrity watchmaker Jean Marc Wiederrecht fiddling about with wheels and pinions, it promised to be almost as good as going to Switzerland.
Another surprise was that instead of being mildly appalled by the whole thing I found myself rather liking the experience. As you long as you stick to the script (don’t order off the menu, don’t swim over the invisible line in the sea demarcated by the lifeguards standing sentry-like every 50 metres or so along the beach, do spend a lot money on very yellow gold etc etc) you will find much to recommend Dubai. It is also very clean, in fact there is probably a minister for cleanliness and he is obviously doing a bang up job. This is the only place where I have seen someone vacuuming the pavement outside the hotel and when, after half an hour’s breast-stroke between the invisible lines in the sea, I encountered a small leaf floating in ‘my’ bit of the Persian Gulf I almost felt like firing off a letter of complaint.
So pre-occupied was I with this issue of etiquette vis-à-vis bijouterie de l’homme that I completely forgot to seek his opinion on a set of Van Cleef links and studs coming up at auction and while writing this it has only just occurred to me that I also omitted to commission a gold belt buckle recreating my 1970s Van Cleef astrological pendant…I blame the jet lag and I am considering writing a stiff letter to Dubai’s minister in charge of reminding forgetful tourists to buy stuff from Van Cleef & Arpels on the subject.